Thursday, August 26, 2010

Ads Are A Minus

Laura Kaminker has made a list of every ad you see or hear during the action in a NESN Red Sox broadcast. The actual list comes after her intro, and it shows you the ads inning by inning. It's incredible! And she didn't even include the Citgo sign, the Majestic logo on the uniforms and other equipment logos, or the pre- and post-game bombardments.

The stuff we have to hear and see during the game is just sickening. This sport has so much built-in space for ads--why do they have to do any at all during the innings?

And around the park itself has just gotten out of control. Look at a picture of Fenway Park from 1998. No ads on any of the outfield walls, or the walls along the field in foul territory. Just green. Laura says there have always been ads on the outfield walls. I think she's referring to the walls at the back of the stands, as Fenway has always had those--the equivalent of the Brut sign and that whole row of ads Yankee Stadium had. Now the shit is right on the field, surrounding it.

I would also like to see a Yankees version of this ad list. They take it to the next level with the broadcast booth itself having a sponsor, and a commercial jingle playing at the stadium after every strikeout.

I have also talked before about how it should be one way or the other. Either ads between innings and nowhere else, OR, fine, put ads throughout, but continue to give us some type of content between innings--endless possibilities for those 17 breaks in the action, complete with live shots of the field and stuff. Does any viewer who never goes to games even know that the first baseman throws grounders to the other infielders between innings? Not like that should be the centerpiece of what they'd show, but it's about time someone showed the ENTIRE game experience. I'd trade that for ads throughout (as long as the total time spent on those ads was equal to what we get now between innings).